Spin at last, spin at last

One of the great ironies of the fall of Wendy Alexander as Scottish Labour leader is that after a year of disastrous political communication, she and her supporters have finally managed to get across a line – albeit one that has no basis in reality.

I write today in The Guardian that her resignation has far more to do with Labour’s inability to cope with opposition than her breaking of the rules regarding donations. However, she, her brother, Douglas, and David Whitton are putting it about that she’s gone because of a vendetta by nationalists who have  basically hunted her down over an honest mistake and a trivial one at that. Maybe it’s sympathy but that argument is getting a decent hearing in the press and on TV and radio.

It’s also utter rubbish of course. It seemed at times that there were far more people in the Labour Party keen to do her damage than in the SNP. Her inept political judgment over the referendum, her appalling performances at FMQs and her inability to offer a coherent opposition were problems that no leader could survive.

One side-point: it’s now virtually impossible to have a political contest without political journalists writing it up as a feud, a bloodbath, in-fighting etc. I don’t doubt there are real personality clashes between the candidates to take over from Wendy but a leadership election can also be about ideas, strategy and the future. But such is our political culture it’s maybe too much to hope that the forthcoming election (if there is to be one) will be written up in that way. 

Government abuse of state broadcasting

The news that the French president, Mr Carla Bruni, is seeking to tighten his grip on France’s state television service  seems alarming. The proposal that he and his Cabinet, rather than an independent body,  appoint the head of the public servcice broadcaster opens the door to direct political interference.  Opponents of Mr Sarkozy are already making comparisons with Silvio Berlusconi’s, albeit more direct, control of national TV.

Thanks goodness that there could be no question of the government of the day and the state broadcaster in this country colluding to damage the government’s political opponents.  Except that  perhaps the most blatant example of such a thing in any western democracy has taken place at the very highest level of the BBC. When the idea of a Scottish Six was first mooted – replacing the BBC’s six o’clock news with a programme produced from Scotland, the then director-general John Birt worked closely with Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson to scupper the plans, with the sole purpose  of damaging the SNP and Scottish Independence.

Birt subsequently boasted about this in his autobiography. Imagine if such a thing happened in France (or even Italy) – the Prime Minister of the day conducting a joint campaign with the head of the state broadcaster in order to damage an opposition party.  It all makes Mr Sarkozy’s plans look tame in comparison. 

Douglas Fraser and Scottish political journalism

So Douglas Fraser, Scottish political editor of The Herald, is leaving newspapers to become business and economics editor at BBC Scotland.  While working for John Swinney, when he was leader of the SNP, I found Douglas to be one of the very few political editors in Scotland who seemed to be interested in, er, politics (or at least policies). The rest of the hacks are great at recording expenses abuses, filing stories on who’s up and who’s down, highlighting U-turns, gaffes, humiliating climb-downs etc etc - all of which is legitimate territory for political reporters, but which should form only part of the political agenda.

Tony Blair, or was it Alastair Campbell?, once famously described the Scottish political hacks as “unreconstructed w*****s” – something they of course enjoyed hugely. I wouldn’t be so rude, but Scottish politics could really do with some new faces among the Holyrood press corps who seem genuinely enthused by political ideas and debate, not just how many ministerial car trips there have been in the last 12 months.

anti-SNP hysteria

Under Magnus Linklater (who I used to work with at the BBC) The Times Scottish edition sometimes makes the Daily Record look like the voice of reason when it comes to the SNP. Today in his column Magnus just engages in a rant and manages to include references both to Nazi Germany and Mussolini when discussing the SNP government.  Wow, even Brian Wilson would surely struggle to do that.

 

Policies – when they really don’t matter

Another day, another disastrous poll for Labour, this time in The Guardian (which today also includes a fascinating article on Gordon Brown’s style of government). It’s not that the Westminster government is embroiled in John Major-style chaos, it’s just that most voters are giving a “Yea, whatever” response whenever Mr Brown or any of his ministers say anything. That’s why the Prime Minister is in such deep trouble. Global initiatives to bring down the price of oil, locking up terrorist suspects, action to tackle struggling schools, increasing social mobility are all surely popular, but the government is not engaging people, because basically they want Labour out.

As a senior strategist for a struggling party (the SNP in the run up to the 2003 Scottish Parliament elections) this is all quite familiar to me. I remember the BBC conducting a poll at the start of the 2003 campaign asking voters to rank policies in terms of importance. Voters were not told which policies came from which party. In the event, our key pledges – such as class sizes, nurses pay, halting private involvement in public services – came top. But ultimately  that didn’t matter. The voters may have liked our policies but at that stage they didn’t much like us – and didn’t (yet) want us in government. 

Sometimes parties just have to accept something that goes against the political DNA – there are occasions when the public mood is such that there is not much a single party or leader can do. Parties usually overestimate their ability to shape change and need to come to terms with that reality.

But, as the SNP showed in 2007, circumstances can change relatively quickly.  What this means is that parties need to put themselves in a position where they can take advantage of those changed circumstances. In the SNP’s case this meant focusing almost always on the positive,  having a popular leader and  devising messages that resonated. Interestingly the SNP did not  talk explicitly  about change in 2007 – the slogan was ”It’s time”, not “It’s time for change.” This allowed the party to add positive messages to the end of the slogan  – It’s time to: cut class sizes, axe the council tax, bring our troops home from Iraq etc.

So for Labour what this means is: elect a new leader, stop short-term positioning and try to find a positive reason to vote for you.  But remember – don’t assume any of this will do the trick.

More on BBC and Zimbabwe

On a different tack to my post yesterday, Danny Finkelstein, of The Times, also has concerns about the BBC’s reporting of the situation in Zimbabwe. He’s critical of the language used by the corporation’s World Affairs editor, John Simpson. Simpson’s remarks may have originally been taken from a two-way, where inevitably scripting is not going to be as tight as a written voice-piece or package script. I think Finkelstein still has a point, however, particularly over the word - outmanoeuvred. 

“Balanced” reporting on Zimbabwe

Listening to the excellent Good Morning Scotland programme this morning, which you can find here by navigating to the Listen Again button, I was struck by the programme’s coverage of Zimbabwe – in particular the question of balance and impartiality that it raised.  For some time now both professional journalists (most notably Martin Bell) and academics have debated the extent to which the key public service journalism ethic of balance should apply. This morning GMS seemed to cover the Zimbabwe story in classic “on the one hand, but on the other” style. After eight o’clock, a clip was played of the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, followed by an interview with the deputy information minister in the Zimbabwe government. An academic was then invited to essentially give his verdict on the competing claims. In particular he was asked by one of the presenters, Ken McDonald (incidentally one of BBC Scotland’s best journalists),  a question which went like this: “Both sides are blaming each other for the violence … how do we know where the truth lies?”  The interviewee gave a very firm response hostile to the government. But does the BBC really need to frame questions in this way – as if the claims made by the murderous regime of Robert Mugabe have any equivalence with those of the opposition. There are some instances when the notion of balance becomes ludicrous – for example, when one side is clearly lying to cover up a programme of systematic political murder.  Do we really need to hear those lies? I should declare an interest here – I used to produce Good Morning Scotland and also wrestled with these very issues; most notably during the Balkans wars. I remember regularly booking an articulate spokesman for the Serbs, who of course - as was his job -  put forward the point of view of Milosevic. At the time it seemed the obvious thing to do, to get their side of the story or to at least put their claims under scrutiny.  But looking back I don’t think I thought clearly enough about the proper nature and notion of journalistic balance. 

 

 

Not that I’m obsessed by Tom Harris

Reflecting on his 15 minutes of fame caused by his blog posting on happiness Tom Harris MP has written today about the nature of blogging, in particular those who comment – often abusively and often anonymously -  on political blogs. Part of Tom’s argument is to question the idea that  “the general populace would prefer political debate to be more courteous and polite.”  But the problem with that thought is that it is hard to make any sort of a case for believing that those who comment on political blogs are in any way representative of the general populace. Although major UK blogs such as Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes, as well as online articles by mainstream newspapers, can attract comments in the hundreds, that kind of participation is of course still relatively tiny. For me the restricted nature of  online political debate is just another depressing sign that politics and political ideas are too often seen by most people as a closed conversation between people who inhabit a different world. It is that, rather than the problem of abusive comments (distasteful and childish although they may be), that is the bigger concern.

On a related issue newspapers and broadcasters with active comment sites should not allow online comments to influence to any great extent perceptions of what their general readers and audience are interested in. There’s a real danger that in the rush to embrace the idea that the old “producer -consumer” model of the media is dead that it’s taken as read that those who simply want to read or watch the news (still by far the greatest majority) have the same interests as those who want to comment.

 

 

 

What’s Tom Harris got against squirrels?

The Labour MP  and minister Tom Harris, has taken time out from his day job (slagging off the SNP) to broadcast to the nation about what he really meant in his blog posting about unhappiness.

The post and the subsequent story tells us a lot about a lot of things. Firstly modern-day political journalism – it’s not very good. Even with the Daily Mail/Tory spin Tom’s remarks are not that interesting or original, but they’ve propelled broadcasters in particular into a rather over-excited state.

Secondly, it shows the dangers of having ex-journalists as MPs. Tom’s blog is better-written than most and is clearly designed to attract attention – it was the phrase: “why is everyone so bloody miserable?” that has created most of the fuss.  There’s a lot of moaning about relentlessly on-message MPs and MSPs but a lively turn of phrase combined with a hint of self-indulgence, is disastrous for serious political parties.

And thirdly, this whole story says a lot about blogging itself – not just the dangers of the medium but that it is only really powerful when it is picked up by the mainstream media that many bloggers profess to hate.

But the oddest thing about all this is Tom Harris’s subsequent post which takes his Tory critics to task. He likens their reaction as being ”the political equivalent of chucking rocks at a squirrel – entertaining, but rather missing the point”.  Is it just me or is that not just a plain weird analogy – the idea of throwing rocks at a wild animal as a form of entertainment? 

Contempt of court – what’s the point?

Supermodel and privacy campaigner Naomi Campbell today admitted assaulting two police officers at Heathrow Airport. The news would not have come as a surprise to readers of The Sun who were told by the supersoaraway in a front-page splash on April 4 that NAOMI SPAT IN COP’S FACE. Although the intro to the story included the word allegedly there were no quote marks or qualifications around the headline. The main story went on to say that Naomi was crazed and had gone berserk.  This is interesting because as every student journalist knows, reporters are in danger of falling foul of the Contempt of Court Act if they publish anything that could create a substantial risk of serious prejudice once a case has been deemed active – eg if an arrest has been made. In this instance Campbell had indeed been arrested, as the copy pointed out, when the April 4 story was written. I don’t want to see The Sun being prosecuted for contempt – I’ve always thought that jurors could be trusted to try cases on the basis of evidence before them, rather than what they may have read in the papers. Important factors such as the time between publication and the likely date of any trial (and indeed whether there would be a jury trial) would also have been taken into account, but cases such as this one show that the contempt legislation is looking more and redundant. When it comes to alleged terrorist cases, it seems that any amount of information can be published before trial with no danger of contempt proceedings being brought.  

Traditionally judges in Scotland have been tougher on contempt than the courts in England – although high profile cases in the late 1990s relaxed to a large extent this traditional strict view. The European Convention on Human Rights – with its free speech article – has been particularly important in this regard. There was another interesting example this week when The Sun’s front page splash on Thursday carried the headline GOT HIM over the story of the arrest of a suspect in the Moira Jones murder case. 

For those of us who teach law for journalists all this makes the area of contempt of court very challenging – indeed given current practice is it not time this aspect of the law was looked at again so that there is greater clarity of what is and is not now acceptable?